Midstate journalist, recently in Ukraine, speaks about plane crash

Trey Yingst, 20, is a Midstate native and a current student at American University in Washington D.C. who has a passion for international news.

He co-founded News2Share, a website that focuses on conflicts around the world and his work recently took him to Ukraine where he covered their presidential election. “It really looked like the president was going to be able to hone in on making the country better and ultimately having a better Ukraine,” said Yingst.

However, tensions on the Eastern border with Russia continue to increase, especially with the presence of pro-russian separatist in Ukraine. The pro-russian separatists are the same Russian military that took over Crimea one year ago.

“Many people on the ground in Ukraine say that the Russians are supporting these Pro-Russian separatists that are in the Eastern part of the country. Now we will to have to see if the Ukrainian President is going to be able to control the pro-Russian separatists because if he is not he is going to need some help from outside sources, maybe the United States, maybe some other powers in Europe,” said Yingst.

Ukrainians claim in the past two weeks Russia shot down two planes and now a Malaysian passenger plane has been shot down in the same air space.

“It could have been a mistake by the pro-russian separatist, it could have been a mistake by the russians, or it could have been on purpose and we are just going to have to wait and see.. What is going on in Ukraine is ultimately going to effect the entire world. This is my on take on the situation but if we ultimately find out this plane was shot down by the Russians and Vladimir Putin knew about it, mistake or not, this could start a war, a war much larger and on a much larger scale then it is right now,” said Yingst.